Closer than the Bones (19 page)

I reached the welcoming shade of the summerhouse porch and rapped on the door. No one answered, so I twisted the doorknob, pushed open the door, and walked in.

A moment later, I stumbled back out, trying not to throw up my lunch.

Chapter Thirteen

I stood in the sun and gulped in deep breaths of humid, hot air, trying to steady my stomach. What I had seen inside the summerhouse was seared into my visual memory banks. I couldn’t erase it, but at least here in the sunlight it was receding a bit. I knew I should probably go back inside and check for signs of life, on the faint chance that life wasn’t completely extinguished. But I realized that it was a faint hope. No one could sustain that kind of damage and still be alive.

As I stumbled my way back to the house, still shaken by what I had seen, clouds diluted the sunlight. Shadows gathered about me, and I felt cold. The viciousness of this death was even more horrifying than that of Hamilton Packer’s, and I feared the killer was losing whatever tenuous grip on sanity that he or she had.

Once inside the house, I could feel my equilibrium beginning to return, and my steps were far less shaky as I made my way to the library. Surely, by now, Jack Preston or one of his men would be available.

I opened the library door without knocking, and Jack looked up at me from the desk, annoyance in his expression. One glance at my face, however, and any rebuke faded away, unspoken.

“Ernie! What’s wrong?” Faster than I could have believed possible, he was around the desk and at my side.

I took a deep breath. “In the summerhouse. Katie. She’s dead. Someone’s beaten her face in.”

Saying the words brought that terrible image back, and I could see the poor, misguided girl all over again. Her body lay sprawled drunkenly across the sofa where I had sat talking to Brett earlier in the day. Her uniform had been hiked up over her waist, and her panties—red silk, no less—hung off one leg. Her head had been turned into a pulpy mass. The only way I recognized her was her hair, the long blonde tresses now streaked with blood and brain matter.

Jack swore under his breath. “Here, sit down.” He guided me to a chair, and I sank gratefully into it. My knees wouldn’t have held me up much longer. He crouched in front of me. “Did you see anyone else in there?”

I shook my head. “I should have gone in to check on her, but I couldn’t. It was too horrible, and I don’t think she could still be alive.”

“Right.” Jack stood up. “I hate to leave you like this, but I’d better get out there.” He motioned for one of his men, whom in my distress I hadn’t noticed lurking in the background, to accompany him.

“I’ll be okay. Just go,” I said. My voice sounded almost normal, which surprised me.

Jack had pulled a cell phone from his pocket as he strode out the door. He would be summoning the crime-scene investigative team back to Idlewild. I prayed they would find something to link the killer to the crime scene, something that would help resolve this horrible situation as quickly as possible.

As I was trying to summon the strength to get myself out of the chair, Mrs. Greer came into the room. “Miss Carpenter. What’s going on? Mr. Preston popped his head in the kitchen and asked me to come check on you in here, then he disappeared like a tornado out the back door. Is something wrong out there in the summerhouse?” She held out a hand to me, and I clasped it in mine, taking comfort from the warmth and sturdiness of her work-roughened fingers.

“I’m afraid,” I said, “that I have some really bad news, Mrs. Greer. I went out to the summerhouse just now, and I found Katie there.” I breathed deeply. “She’s dead.” I couldn’t tell her how, I just couldn’t describe that scene again for anyone.

Mrs. Greer went completely still, and I could feel the sudden tension in her hand. She closed her eyes and said a brief prayer. “That poor girl,” she said when she had finished and opened her eyes. “Always trying to reach for something she couldn’t get, and now someone’s done gone and stopped her forever.” Her drawl was even more pronounced.

The compassion in her voice made me want to cry. She was obviously shaken by the news, but as usual, her first thoughts were for other people. She got me to my feet and held my hand as she led me to the kitchen, where she sat me down at the table. Within minutes she had presented me with a hot, sweet cup of coffee, and I sipped at it gratefully. In the bright and warmly cheerful kitchen, the horror of what I had seen finally began to recede a little.

Mrs. Greer joined me at the table, her face still a bit ashen from the shock, and drank from her own mug of coffee. “Lawsy me, there’s wickedness in this ol’ world,” she said, shaking her head dolefully. “I thought that child was doing better, now, but I guess she just couldn’t get above her raising.”

“How do you mean?” I asked, wondering what she meant by that remark. Surely she wasn’t blaming Katie for her own death, saying she deserved it.

“That poor girl didn’t deserve getting something like this done to her, no how, no way,” Mrs. Greer said shrewdly, as if she’d read my mind. “But if there was a way of inviting trouble to the table, that child and her family knew how to do it. Her granddaddy made his living with ’shine, and her daddy and big brothers been running dope ’tween here and Memphis for years. They done spent more time over at Parchman than any family in this county.”

“Katie took after her family, then? You mean she’d been in jail?”

She sighed deeply. “No, she hadn’t been in jail. She had some troubles when she was younger, ’bout thirteen or so. But her mama did her best to get that girl out of trouble and keep her there. She was doing some better, I thought, by working here, keeping a steady job, the last year. But sometimes you just can't get away from your family and their bad ways.”

“What do you think Katie did? Do you think she did something that led her to... this?” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

“She was acting awful sly and secret the last two days. She musta seen something, and I reckon she thought she could make something out of it.” Mrs. Greer shook her head again. “Ever’ one of that family always thought they was smarter than they was, else they wouldn’t’ve kept getting caught so much. I was praying to the Good Lord that Katie might have more on the ball than the rest of ’em, but I guess I was wrong. I surely was wrong.”

“I’m sure you did what you could to help her,” I said sympathetically.

“Me and Miss Mary Tucker both. I known that girl’s mother since she was a baby, and she was desperate to find Katie a good job. So I talked to Miss Mary Tucker, and she was willing to give Katie a chance. She didn’t always want to work too hard, and I’d have to push her along, but she was doing pretty good. Until now.” A few tears trickled down her face, and she used her apron to wipe them away.

“Speaking of working,” I said, as something occurred to me, “what was Katie supposed to be doing this afternoon? Hadn’t anyone noticed that she wasn’t working?”

Mrs. Greer shook her head. “Miss Mary Tucker gave each of the girls one afternoon off each week, so’s they could go to town and do stuff. This was Katie’s afternoon, and I would’ve reckoned that’s where she was.”

“When would she have left for town? Normally, I mean?” “Oh, just as soon’s she could get away after lunch. ’Bout one-thirty, most likely.”

“She would have changed clothes before she went into town, wouldn’t she?”

“Oh, my, yes,” Mrs. Greer laughed, sadly. “She wouldn’t’ve wanted any of her friends to see her in no maid’s uniform. She always wore her blue jeans with those rips in the knees and some kinda skimpy little ol’ top.”

My hands clutched my mug of coffee, seeking to absorb some of the ebbing warmth. “She never changed clothes to go into town,” I said, my voice sounding strained. “She was still wearing her uniform.”

We both sat there, quiet, for a few minutes. I had no doubt that Mrs. Greer was again saying prayers for Katie’s soul, which was probably what I should have been doing as well. Instead, though, I was buzzing from one thought to another, trying to sort out the implications of what I had seen and where it had taken place.

Had Katie been sexually assaulted? The way the body was left, you could sure get the notion she had been. Her uniform pulled up like that, over her thighs, her panties dangling off one leg, down around her ankle. My stomach ached at the thought of it.

Maybe she had been willing to have intercourse with her killer, and that was how she had been taken unawares. That made me even sicker to contemplate. Which of the men in this house could have done that to the girl? Calmly had sex with her, then beaten her face in?

Then again, maybe it was all an illusion, trying to misdirect us. The problem with that, of course, was that the autopsy would soon reveal whether Katie had had sex with someone, willingly or not. Maybe the preliminary crime-scene investigation would yield enough information to answer those questions. I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to dwell on those details.

Finally I forced myself to ask the question that had been lurking in the back of my mind ever since I had discovered Katie’s body. “Mrs. Greer,” I said, trying to make my voice as casual as possible, “have you seen Brett this afternoon?”

“He stuck his head in here right after lunch,” she said, not noticing how tense I was, waiting for her response. “He was going into town, he said. He’d run out of them cigars he smokes, and he was going to pick up some in town.”

I drew a shaky breath of relief. At first, I had feared that Brett, too, might be dead in the summerhouse, though I hadn’t had the stomach to go in and see for myself. Then I had been afraid he might have killed Katie and fled the scene. The latter case might still hold true, I reasoned, but I was praying it wouldn’t and that Brett would soon appear, innocently unaware of what had happened to Katie.

“Well, he won’t have anywhere to smoke them now,” I said, with a faint attempt at humor, black though it was.

“No, I reckon not,” Mrs. Greer said, her composure cracking for a moment. I held out my hand, and she grasped it, taking comfort from me this time.

From where we sat, we could now hear sounds of activity from outside. More personnel from the sheriff’s department must have arrived.

I got up and looked out a window, toward the summerhouse. As I watched men going inside, a jaunty black BMW convertible drove around the side of the house and came to an abrupt halt. Brett Doran got out of the car and ran up to the summerhouse. I ran for the back door, to try to head him off before he could walk in on that horrifying scene.

By the time I had the door open and was calling his name urgently, one of Jack’s men had come out onto the porch of the summerhouse and was talking to him. Brett heard me calling and turned toward me. He turned back and nodded at the officer, then loped across the grass, his long stride covering the ground between us in a matter of seconds.

“What the hell’s going on in there?” he demanded. In one hand he clutched a large plastic bag, emblazoned with the logo of Tullahoma’s only cigar and pipe shop.

Impulsively, I threw my arms around him and gave him a huge hug. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you,” I told him as I released him.

“I’m glad to see you, too,” he said, “but would you please tell me what’s going on back there?” His head jerked back in the direction of the summerhouse.

“Come inside with me,” I said, taking his hand. For a moment, he thought about resisting, but the look on my face warned him against it. I got him inside and sat him down at the table, where Mrs. Greer had more coffee waiting for us.

“There’s been another murder,” I said.

Brett paled, and he reached with a shaky hand for the mug of coffee. “Who?” His voice squeaked.

“Katie,” I said, my voice terse. “I found her, about half an hour ago. Someone had beaten her to death.”

He shuddered. “What the hell is going on here?” He had to set down the mug, his hands were shaking so badly.

Footsteps sounded behind us as someone came into the kitchen. “Mr. Doran,” Jack Preston said. “I’d like to speak with you, if you don’t mind. Could you join me in the library?” Brett stared at me, his eyes wide with fear.

I wanted to say,
Brett, what have you done?
Surely the boy wouldn’t have looked so terrified if he hadn’t done something, just because Jack Preston wanted to talk to him. But if Brett had gone into Tullahoma to buy cigars, and had been in town for any length of time, he ought to have an alibi for Katie’s death. Or so I told myself as I watched him follow Jack, with great reluctance, out of the kitchen.

“That boy is some scared,” Mrs. Greer said.

“You saw it, too,” I replied. “Why on earth do you think he is? Surely he didn’t do this.”

She shook her head. “That boy’s no killer. He’s got a good heart, you can tell. But he be a bit misguided sometimes. He just a country boy with some education who made good, and he don’t always know how to handle himself.”

“I like him a lot,” I said, and Mrs. Greer smiled, gently. “I think you’re right, he is a good boy, but right now I’m worried about him.”

She sighed, staring down at the mug in her hands. “He didn’t kill that poor girl, but I ’spect I know what’s worrying him." She sighed again, more heavily this time. “If it was someone else, Miss Carpenter, I wouldn’t be saying this, but I know you won’t be carrying tales where they ain’t no business going.”

I nodded, encouraging her to continue.

“I ’spect it was drugs,” Mrs. Greer said. ‘That boy was living the high life for a while, and a time or two when he came here, he was flying so high, he didn’t need no jet plane. Miss Mary Tucker was terrified for him, ’cause she lost a young cousin to drugs, so she set him right down here, at this table, and gave him a talking to like you wouldn’t believe. She put the fear of the Good Lord into that boy, and when she was done with him, I would’ve sworn he’d never touch drugs again in his life.”

“When was this?”

“Back just before Christmas. He came here a few days ahead of the other guests, and Katie was working here then. ’Course, he didn’t go off’em right then; he couldn’t, ’cause he needed some help to do it, and I ‘spect Katie might’ve helped supply him while he was here.” She shook her head. “I never could catch her for sure, but I found her a-talking to him a few times when she should’ve been working. They both looked awful guilty. If I hadn’t’ve known better, I’d’ve sworn they was sleeping together. But Mr. Brett being like he is, I knew that wasn’t it. So it had to be them drugs.”